Innovative affordability experiments
Biologics are medicines that are produced from living organisms or contain components of living organisms. They are very complicated drugs to manufacture and are therefore very expensive. This is why it is often a challenge for patients to pay for them and why it is not sustainable for Pharma companies to provide them for free or even at low cost.
This high cost is especially problematic in countries where these medicines need to be paid for out-of-pocket, i.e. where patients are not reimbursed by governments or health insurance organizations. In the past, most of these patients could not benefit from groundbreaking new medicines.
Following are 2 examples of how innovators have experimented with innovative solutions for this issue.
Risk sharing
- Background. In Chile an innovator addressed this access challenge for Hepatitis C patients. The treatment usually lasted 3 months. After that, success or failure of the expensive therapy could be assessed.
- The concept. The Pharma company made a risk sharing contract with an insurance company. Not all patients respond in the same way to a treatment. For the limited number of patients for whom this treatment was not effective, the insurance company would reimburse the treatment cost to those patients.
- Win-win-win. Patients that did not respond to this treatment could try and afford another. The insurance company generated new business and customers. The Pharma company could provide increased access and a competitive advantage.
Crowdfunding
- Background. An innovator in Hong Kong tried out an access solution for cancer patients. This therapy could take a long time. The innovator was aware that it is customary for families to live together under the same roof to maintain close-knit ties.
- The concept. The Pharma company organized funding by creating a “spending account” and engaging family, friends and merchants. The patients could enroll in the program in their doctor’s office. Their friends and family could sign up at multiple locations, committing to automatically contribute a % of their spending at participating merchants, like supermarkets and gas stations. These contributions went into the “spending account” and were channeled towards the patient’s treatment cost.
- Win-win-win. The patient could afford the treatment and get both financial and moral support. The merchants, family and friends provided generosity. The Pharma company secured increased access and differentiation.
These were not easy experiments. The traditional way would have been to just focus on those patients that could afford the medicines (maybe until broader health coverage became available). Passionate innovators across the globe didn’t accept this. As a result, many more patients could be helped right away, by engaging “non-traditional, non-healthcare” partners like insurance companies and family members. See also a few other “access” examples in earlier blogs, engaging banks and credit card companies.
As Socrates said:
“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but building on the new.“
So, as Innovation Leader, I supported these innovators, inspired others in the company by sharing these examples and secured centers of excellence that could scale these innovations to other countries/brands.
More about this topic: Here’s how to improve access to healthcare around the world, by Frans van Houten.
Please share your thoughts on the above!
Click here for more of my blogs on innovation within corporations: Wim Vandenhouweele